JCPL Teens

DECEMBER 31, 2012

More teen books becoming TV shows

ABC Family recently announced that they are working on two TV series based on teen books. I think they are still in the very beginning stages, so we'll need to wait and see what happens. In the meantime, you may want to try the books.

Recovery Road by Blake Nelson: While she is in a rehab facility for drug and alcohol abuse, Maddie meets Stewart, and they begin a relationship. They try to maintain this relationship (and stay sober) after they both get out.

Juliet Immortal by Stacey Jay: For seven hundred years, the souls of Romeo and Juliet have repeatedly inhabited the bodies of newly deceased people to battle to the death as sworn enemies, until they meet for the last time as two Southern California high school students. (By the way, I love the cover blurb for this one, which says "The greatest love story ever told is a lie.")

Have you read either of these books? Would you watch the show for either?

We had all of the teen librarians from JCPL choose their two favorite books of 2012. We'll be posting two librarians picks a day. You can check out or place a hold on any of the titles listed at any of our libraries. And let us know what your choices are in the comments section. Enjoy!

Arra, Teen Librarian at Lakewood Library:

Cinder by Marissa Meyer: I love retold fairy tales and this one is excellent. In the future humans can have cyborg parts to replace injuries. Being cyborg is not all it’s cracked up to be and Cinder is just trying to fit in. When handsome prince Kai asks for her help repairing his personal droid Cinder finds herself pulled into the world of palace intrigue including an evil queen from Luna, colony on the moon, and a mysterious plague that is ravaging the population.

Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein: When Queenie is captured by the Nazi’s in occupied France she is tortured and forced to tell her secrets. Her friend Maddie is desperately plotting her rescue. Will Queenie, code name Verity, be able to hold on to the secrets she knows until she is rescued? I loved the fast moving plot and the basis of this story in the true history of World War II.

Pam, Teen Librarian at Standley Lake Library:

Raven Boys by Maggie Stiefvater: Mysticism, mystery, and mythology - the Raven Boy’s plot was unique, the friendships rang true, and the characters interesting. Ponder the thought, “Either you’re his true love or you killed him.” It kept me reading through the night.

Carnival of Souls by Melissa Marr: Delicious, dark and decadent! The characters – witches, daimons, and humans – were real! The place – the Carnival of Souls, where both murder and pleasure are equally up for sale – was lush and lavishly described. Add in a few shots of adrenaline, a fight to the death, and a romance that no way, nah uh, should happen and you have another sleep deprived night. Good thing the holiday break upon us!

We had all of the teen librarians from JCPL choose their two favorite books of 2012. We'll be posting two librarians' picks a day. You can check out or place a hold on any of the titles listed at any of our libraries. And let us know what your choices are in the comments section. Enjoy!

Briana, Teen Librarian at Evergreen Library:

Every Day by David Levithan: Every day, “A” wakes in the body of a different 16-year-old, borrowing that person’s life (and experiencing life from that person’s perspective) for one day. A tries not to interfere with the lives s/he visits, but things change when A falls in love with the beautiful and sensitive Rhiannon. How do you maintain a relationship when your gender and appearance is constantly changing?

Insurgent by Veronica Roth: In this follow-up to Divergent, the factions in Tris’s society have descended into all-out war, forcing the Dauntless to make uneasy alliances with other factions. Tris’s relationship with Tobias deepens, and readers learn more about Roth’s dystopian world in this action-packed second book that is just as good as the first.

Erin, Teen Librarian at Golden Library:

The Diviners by Libba Bray: Seventeen-year-old Evie O'Neill is thrilled when she is exiled from small-town Ohio to New York City in 1926, even when a rash of occult-based murders thrusts Evie and her uncle, curator of The Museum of American Folklore, Superstition, and the Occult, into the thick of the investigation. Bray does a great job of capturing New York in 20s and scaring the pants off you!

Shadow and Bone by Leigh Bardugo: Orphaned by the Border Wars, Alina Starkov is taken from obscurity and her only friend, Mal, to become the protegé of the mysterious Darkling, who trains her to join the magical elite in the belief that she is the Sun Summoner, who can destroy the monsters of the Fold. This book had everything: a compelling, engaging heroine, believable love story, gruesome monsters, devious villains, fascinating landscape, the whole shebang.

We had all of the teen librarians from JCPL choose their two favorite books of 2012. We'll be posting two librarians' picks a day. You can check out or place a hold on any of the titles listed at any of our libraries. And let us know what your choices are in the comments section. Enjoy!

Jessie, Teen Librarian at the Columbine Library:

Ripper by Stefan Petrucha: Carver Young grew up in a New York City orphanage reading crime novels and dreaming of becoming a detective. One day he gets adopted by a world-famous detective who is in the middle of investigating a brutal serial killer who is terrorizing New York City, and he wants Carter’s help. This book does have a few gruesome parts, but it's also a great twist on a real-life story and it's full of action and edge-of-your-seat thrills.

The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight by Jennifer Smith: Hadley hates that her father is getting remarried, but, like it or not, she is traveling to England for the wedding. After missing her flight to London by just four minutes, Hadley gets rebooked on another flight. She ends up sitting next to a guy named Oliver and they spend the whole flight talking and getting to know each other. This is a perfect love story about fate and possibility.

Amy, Teen Librarian at the Edgewater Library:

The Fault in our Stars by John Green: Hazel has terminal cancer-but this fantastic story is not about death as much as it is about life and wondering…will I be remembered? I loved how the characters were both so interested in a certain book, both contacting the author to find out what happened next.

Starters by Lissa Price: A dystopian story about teens renting their bodies to seniors so the seniors can be young again. Everyone from 20-60 is dead. The young are called starters, the over 60 are enders. Callie has been rented a couple of times, with no ill effects, but her third time is a nightmare.

We had all of the teen librarians from JCPL choose their two favorite books of 2012. We'll be posting two librarians' picks a day. You can check out or place a hold on any of the titles listed at any of our libraries. And let us know what your choices are in the comments section. Enjoy!

Tana, Teen Librarian at the Arvada Library:

Necromancing the Stone by Lish McBride: This book is so much fun! Why? Well, let’s see… There’s a werebear best friend who likes to skateboard AND sit on your enemies, an army of angry gnomes (with eccentric and thrilling names like, Chauncey the Devourer of Souls…), there’s a pygmy chupacabra that adores beef jerky, a manservant that can change into a cat or tiny, flying dragon and just happens to have a tear jerker backstory. Well developed characters engage in a vivid and unpredictable universe with humor, compassion and believable reactions. I mean, come on! Would your best friend stop being your best friend just because she had become a disembodied head?

Monstrous Beauty by Elizabeth Fama: You know how some books have those boring parts that you have to try to get through to get to the good stuff? This isn’t one of those books! Alternating chapters tell the story of Syrenka the mermaid who falls in love with Ezra in the 1874 and becomes human and Hester, a modern teen who fears for her future. A story of land and sea, love and loss, and the terrible unintended consequences that sometimes result from good intentions.

Chandra, Teen Librarian at the Belmar Library:

I Hunt Killers by Barry Lyga: Jazz grew up with his serial-killer father. Now that his father’s in jail, he’s trying to finally get on with his life. But a copy-cat killer in his hometown is making people wonder if Jazz is following in his father’s footsteps. Jazz is determined to hunt down the killer and prove he’s different.

Keeping the Castle by Patrice Kindl: Althea is seventeen, and the only person in her house trying to keep the castle that her late father left behind. She’s also busy trying to find a man to marry that has enough money to pay for castle upkeep. She’s in hot pursuit of the rich (and aptly named) Lord Boring, but his companion Mr. Fredericks keeps getting in her way. My favorite part is when she serves tadpoles on toast to guests.

Luckily, the world did not end Friday as some predicted based on the Mayan calendar. The Mayans wanted to predict astrological events like eclipses and planet movement. They created a mathematical structure that would allow for the prediction of such events and this led to the creation of a calendar. Our current calendar is based on the Earth's rotation around the sun and lasts approximately 335 1/4 days (thus the need for leap year every 4 years). The Mayan calendar is much more complicated.

The idea of the number 0 originated with the Mayans as did positional notation. You may ask yourself, as I did, what exactly is positional numbering? It is the base 10 numbering system. So the number 195 is 5 in the ones position, 9 in the tens position and 1 in the hundreds position. Easy as Pi right?

The Mayan calendar is written in a circle and has 13 days in a month, 20 months and 365 days in a year. The calendar is cyclical and restarts every 394.3 years. Instead of predicting doom the Mayans celebrated this calendar turn over.

Another interesting astrological fact about 2012: December 21 was the winter solstice and the Sun was aligned with the center of the Milky Way galaxy as seen from Earth for the first time in 26,000 years.

Want to know more about the Mayan calendar? Check out our online database Science in Context.

It’s easy to come up with new ideas once you know how. Let me tell you about four different techniques. First think about a book or two that you’ve read before and really enjoyed. Let’s take Catching Fire as an example. Use the library catalog and search by title for Catching Fire. After you click on the title, scroll down the page until you see the heading, You Might Also Like These. The library catalog suggests other series, other titles and other authors that you may enjoy if you liked Catching Fire and it even tells you why that book, author or series is recommended. For Catching Fire, the catalog recommends the Chaos Walking Series, the Uglies and Unwind. You could read why that book was recommended and then click on one of the titles like Unwind and scroll down the page again for more recommendations. Read-alikes for Unwind include the House of Scorpion and Sapphique – all good choices!

Technique number two is to use a library database called NoveList Plus. NoveList Plus is the best resource we have for learning more about a particular book, author or genre as well as getting rock solid reading recommendations. If we try an author search in NoveList Plus, say for Suzanne Collins, we will see a link of other author and book suggestions. NoveList Plus is a powerful tool and there are many different ways to search it. Play around with it and/or stop by the library to have someone walk you through using it. This database can be accessed outside of the library if you have a library card. Go to our A-Z list of Databases, click on the letter N and then click on NoveList Plus. At this point you will be prompted to enter your name and library card number.

Technique number four – come talk to us! I guarantee that finding books for you to read is our favorite thing to do! Try the catalog and NoveList Plus and let me know what you searched for and what new recommendations or ideas for additional reading you found.

Seventeen-year-old Evie O'Neill is thrilled when she is exiled from small-town Ohio to New York City in 1926, even when a rash of occult-based murders thrusts Evie and her uncle, curator of The Museum of American Folklore, Superstition, and the Occult, into the thick of the investigation.

Bray does an excellent job of capturing New York in the 20s: from the ever-present sorrow left over from World War I to the sassy appeal of the flappers to the night clubs with dancing girls and outlawed booze. Flapper Evie is a complex character as are the other characters that are introduced in this sprawling tale.

The book was genuinely creepy. I'm not normally scared while reading books but the killer in this title was truly terrifying. Especially the creepy song he sings as he stalks his prey..."Naughty John...Naughty John...goes to work with his apron on...." I'll let you imagine what he needs his apron for. Evie has a special talent that allows here to read things about people and their past from holding an object of theirs. This talent works both for and against her. She uses this talent to try to solve a series of murders that are only the beginning of a supernatural mystery guaranteed to give you the chills. The ending is satisfying but gives you hints of more to come. I'm anxiously awaiting the next title in the series.

The Atlantic Wire just posted an article about the 25 Most Wonderful Book Covers of the Year. I agree that there were some amazing covers this year, but didn't agree that these are the 25 best of the year. What book covers made you want to try a new book this year?

The long wait is over! The Hobbit arrives in theaters today! Yippee! After the movie, check out the book from our libraries. If you see the movie, give us your review in the comments section.

In honor of this momentous occasion we are having a trivia contest to win some Hobbit swag on our Facebook page. Like our Facebook page and be the first one to answer the Hobbit trivia question right and you could win a prize! But you have to like us first.

Celebrate the holidays after-hours this Friday at the Evergreen Library! We will construct gingerbread houses, have some snacks and watch a movie. Can you guess which musical fantasy/horror classic we're watching?

1. Released in 1993 2. Filmed using stop motion animation 3. Features a rag doll, a bogeyman, and an ambitious skeleton

If being 16 is difficult enough in one body, it’s hard to imagine just what life is like for “A,” the genderless protagonist of David Levithan’sEvery Day. A wakes up each morning in the body of a different teenager, experiencing life through that person’s eyes for 24 hours. A’s life has always been this way. A has a strict policy of interfering as little as possible with the lives he borrows, but the rules change when A falls for the beautiful and sensitive Rhiannon. At its heart, Every Day is about important questions: does love really conquer all? Can you love someone – unconditionally – regardless of what they look like?

I love the movie Howl’s Moving Castle by the Japanese animation master, Hayao Miyazaki. Jean Simmons, Christian Bale (Batman!), Blythe Danner, and Lauren Bacall lend their voice talents to this magical story of a young woman, Sophie, cursed to be an old woman and the wizard she falls in love with. Will he ever see her as anything other than a ‘mother’ figure? Can she find a way to lift her curse? Can she find a way to save Howl from himself?

Love, love, loveit… AND then… I started listening to Howl’s Moving Castle book on disc by Diana Wynne Jones and HOLY COW!! The story is really different – and yet, I love it just as much as the movie but for different reasons. The book is so full of Sophie’s voice – spirited and stubborn and strangely delicate. She is a wonderful heroine and I love the way she is conveyed along with the other characters by the narrator Jenny Sterlin.

I think it is so much fun to compare books and the movies that are made from them – sometimes they are pretty close, but other times they can be really different. If you like comparing movies to books too, drop into the Arvada Library for our Read It / See It series. We will be watching some really great movies and deciding if we liked the book better or the movie? Our first movie, January 19, will be based on the book Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins.

The atom bomb is the most deadly weapon in the world. The beginnings of the bomb can be traced back to a German chemist Otto Hahn who discovered when uranium is placed next to a radioactive element the uranium atoms will split in two. This discovery came at the beginning of World War II so when Oppenheimer, a US physicist, heard about the discovery he realized this power could be harnessed for a super bomb.

The race was on! Which country would create the bomb first? President Roosevelt started the Manhattan project after a letter from Einstein warned him of the German discovery and research to create an atomic bomb. Another complication to the research project was the use of spies. Many countries were working on creating an atomic bomb and also using spies to steal research from other countries.

The most complicated part of the procedure was to refine uranium. In the natural state it is not fissionable, aka it can't split atoms in two. Columbia University scientists came up with a method using gaseous diffusion and Berkeley scientists invented magnetic separation.

On July 16, 1945 the bomb was tested in Los Alamos, New Mexico. The force of the explosion turned the sand in the dirt into jade green glass. The blast created a crater 10 feet deep and 1,100 feet across. Many scientist on the project were concerned about the potential for destruction of such a weapon if it were ever used. Oppenheimer quoted Hindu scripture, "Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds." The scary part? The atom bomb only uses 1/10th of 1% of it's explosive potential.

Ok. So your sister is getting married and she wants YOU to play Pachelbel’s Canon in D on your sousaphone, where are you going to find the musical score? You could guess how it goes… Kind of sorta getting it right is close enough, right?

We also have music scores in our general collection – look for call numbers 780 – 783 or ask a librarian for assistance! Don’t forget that we have these items in our Juvenile, YA, Adult and Oversized (Q) departments.

With winter upon us, it’s time to start planning what you’ll do on your next snow day. Sure, a few hours ought to be spent curled up with a good novel and some hot chocolate, but after a while, you want to move.

A constructed novel about love, justice and truth--all done without a preachy, "the-moral-of-the-story-is" tone.

There is a love story in this book, but it is realistic and believable, taking place on an organic farm over a summer. Roar (short for Aurora) is upended from city life in LA and finds herself working in a farmers market. Many things happen in the story, but it doesn’t make you feel like you are being forced to learn something new today. Roar is very close to her Dad, who is such a great guy. She has a hilarious best friend who makes some good and crazy choices.

So much to love here, I don’t want to give anything away. READ THIS BOOK!

We love spending holidays snuggled up on the couch watching classic holiday movies. The best part, check them out - for free - from your local library! Here are a few of our favorites:

A Christmas Story - Follow Ralphie on his quest to acquire a Red Rider BB gun for Christmas. Beware of Scut Farkus and his yellow eyes!

Elf - Ok, this isn't technically a classic but I am adding it to my must watch list. A human child raised by elves at the North Pole, learns of his human family and goes to live with them in New York City. My favorite scene is when he makes "breakfast" out of candy and spaghetti and then eats it. Ugh!!

How the Grinch Stole Christmas - The classic cartoon version of this movie is the best. The grumpy, grouchy, Yule-hating Grinch plots to ruin the Whos of Whoville's Christmas. Can he steal their holiday spirit by stealing their holiday treats? Perhaps Christmas means a little bit more than just presents and candy.